I kept repeating to Vilde, my Norwegian friend and well-appreciated organiser of the following proceedings, that Norway is ‘just the same’ as Scotland. This came with the caveats of it being 10 degrees colder, and therefore snowier, in winter and a fair bit more civilized (granted the bar is set quite low on this parameter).
Westies Alpine division checking in for the real race news you have all been waiting for. Yes it’s the start of the skimo season (for all those needing a reminder of this exotic pursuit please consult an earlier exemplar https://westerlandsccc.co.uk/les-diablerets-3d/) and after a year of the race skis gathering dust last year, the wax was
I’d been thinking of a bigger trip in the mountains for most of the year. Having known I was going to have a few months off in summer, due to a change in jobs, I started mulling over some maps of the Alps during some slower days at work. Switzerland east to west roughly measures
Finally this week we put the skis away until next winter. Leyre and I were pushing to squeeze the last spring juices out of a severely curtailed ski touring season given an unusually hot spring and some strange type of Coronavirus that some of you may have heard of back in Glasgow. Alas, the weather
James asked me back in April whether I’d been keen to run in the Italian Alps. Any excuse to stock up on polenta and fine Barolo wine seemed good enough to me. A few months later Ally texted me about a visit to the Alps to come visit Leyre and I. Having spent the best
Seeing as I evidently couldn’t cut it racing it Scotland a change was needed. This nominally involved me jumping on the back of Leyre’s good work in getting a 3-year contract in the Swiss Alps and moving over with an eye on taking on some Swiss and French races. To give a wee flavour of
How many pork pies are too many? Well, the answer depends on who and when you ask. Ask Ally and he’ll probably stop at a meagre 6. Ask me on the other hand and you’ll get an answer close to 20. Excessive for one weekend you say? Well if I were to give you just
Having disgraced myself in Scotland last year (think back to the DQ in The Highlander and getting lost and taking 3hrs in my own back garden in the navigation leg in the FRA relays) it was evident I was in no way fit or competent to hold let alone run with a map. Time to
As a first timer to this cross-country stuff, I can’t say I was all that into it on Sunday morning. Having the day before trudged 16km over wet and boggy fields in Manor Water, the idea of trying to drag myself through 4km of the wet and boggy Hamilton Park Racecourse did not sound up
Having been displaced from my regular stomping ground Glasgow to the port village of Cairnryan in Galloway for work, I was enjoying the peace and serenity that came with having a lovely little cottage beside the sea. Last weekend that sense of peace and serenity was well and truly vanquished as a bunch of 8